Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

BONUS: Jay, Miles, and Jonathan Hickman Spoil the Hell out of Inferno

Inferno #4 is out; and, as promised, we’ve got a bonus interview with Jonathan Hickman–unedited this time, so please forgive the audio–going into the gory details of the miniseries and its finale! (Again, spoiler warning–we can’t emphasize this enough–we spoil Inferno, including its ending, real hard. Listen at your own risk.)

HAWK TALK – The Big Stuff

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about large things.

HAWK TALK – What We Blew Up On Our Summer Vacation

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, Miles and guest hawk Anna Sheffey talked about playing too much Resident Evil during lockdown.

HAWK TALK – Pirates

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, Jay and guest hawk Tea Fougner talked about pirates.

You can find Tea at @teaberryblue on pretty much all of the social medias!

HAWK TALK – Wizards

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about wizards.

Topics, roughly:

  • Fantasy wizards
  • Space wizards
  • Beards and wizards and gender
  • Vancian spellcasting
  • Wizard taxonomy
  • The Baal Shem
  • Book learnin’
  • Towers and Discworld wizards
  • Dragonlance wizards
  • Tolkien wizards
  • Iceman with a wizard beard
  • Which animals make the best wizards
  • Magic: the Gathering
  • Our wizardy D&D characters

HAWK TALK – Hack the Planet

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, in honor of the 1995 film’s 1337-week anniversary, we talked about the finest movie about technology ever made, Hackers.


Topics, roughly:

  • Hackers
  • Mister The Plague
  • What David Bowie and Angelina Jolie have in common
  • Razor & Blade
  • The glory of Matthew Lillard
  • Counterculture
  • Queer (sub)text
  • Focal characters
  • Jay’s sequel pitch

In retrospect, we should have talked way more about Phreak, played amazingly by Renoly Santiago. Sorry, Renoly! That’s what we get for doing Hawk Talk without our usual outlines.

HAWK TALK – Doctor Internet

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about the Internet.


Topics, roughly:

  • Blazing fast 28.8 Kbps dial-up
  • AOL CDs
  • Final Fantasy, MIDI-style
  • Angelfire vs. Carrd
  • The Gaming Intelligence Agency
  • The Brunching Shuttlecocks
  • The finest memes of the early 2000s
  • Chaos
  • Social media, as explained by Jay
  • Social media, as baffles Miles
  • Podcasts vs. the Internet

HAWK TALK – Turtle Power

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.


Topics, roughly:

  • Daredevil parodies
  • The nature of mutation
  • The four humors
  • Archetypes of masculinity
  • Legal status of mutant animal people
  • Questionable toys
  • Adaptations and adaptations of adaptations
  • Miles’s favorite Mirage comic story
  • The excellently weird Archie comic series
  • Girl turtles and naming conventions
  • Movies good and bad
  • Milesangelo

HAWK TALK – Call Any Vegetable

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about vegetables. Kind of.


Topics, roughly:

  • Vegetables. Like we said.
  • Is Apocalypse a fruit?
  • Ghost vs. slime trees
  • Dwarves in the rutabagas
  • Ramen mishaps
  • How to be less terrible at cooking
  • Cherimoya, that weirdo